


Wildfire Clearing

by JoCarthage



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, One Shot, Past Domestic Violence, Queerphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-25 00:47:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20023759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoCarthage/pseuds/JoCarthage
Summary: Alex nodded to Michael and headed straight to the woodpile. Michael was sprawled across the cabin's porch, nose inches from blueprints of his nearly finished ship. His eyes were soft and carried Alex's weight as soon as he set foot on their property. But he didn't follow him.He knew better.





	Wildfire Clearing

Alex nodded to Michael and headed straight to the woodpile. Michael was sprawled across the cabin's porch, nose inches from blueprints of his nearly finished ship. His eyes were soft and carried Alex's weight as soon as he set foot on their property. But he didn't follow him.

He knew better.

Alex kept his head down, stumbling to his destination. It had been an unbearably shitty day on base. Guys making Trump jokes, guys making shitty anti-queer jokes, a new guy trying to show off how butch he was by making misogynistic jokes. A general shitshow of a day, one Alex had no intention of bringing home to Michael.

So he chopped wood.

It wasn't that the cabin really needed it; 4th of July was in a few weeks and it was more than hot enough out here in the desert.

But Alex liked the work of it. The clean, clear progress of it. His entire life's work could be held on a single TB hard-drive, but when he chopped wood, his hours had a weight, a reality. Cord by cord, split by split, shoved-wedge by scraped bark, he built something.

The result was a pile of his frustrations and his endearments for the life he might have lead; it was also a progress sheet, working him closer and closer to the day Michael would finish his ship and they would head for the stars.

It was one of the things Michael had said better for him than he'd ever been able to say: "It's a cycles of violence thing, right? When we were hurting, we got hit. When the people who cared for us were hurting we got hit. It's a correlation in our brains deeper than feeling hungry and getting to eat, more consistent than any love we've had. And since we're not going to hit each other, there has to be someplace for that violence to go. So: chop wood," he'd waved his hand at Alex, "or we fix cars," he gestured to himself. "Anything that's safe and just a bit violent," he shrugged, "It's enough to keep our tempers in check."

Alex didn't know if he'd ever thought of it that way before Michael, but it sang true for him. So when he felt the tension beginning to ache in his hips, the ache in his biceps, he started counting the hours until he could lay his ax-blade into a log of pine.

About a week into moving into the cabin, Michael had taken to taking down trees deep in the property, stacking them high beside the back wall with his powers. Old trees, snags so old they were abandoned by the birds and critters who used freshly dead trees as their nests. 

"Wildfire clearing," he'd called it, and in a way, Alex supposed it was. A bit of controlled violence to prevent uncontrollable violence.

Today, he only needed to chop for an hour. The swing and shift of the ax in his hands was clean. Michael sharpened the blade every weekend. The light way the soft flesh of the wood shone in the afternoon light eased in between the frown-lines around his eyes. Michael had taken to stacking his split cords along the path around the side of the house, so they shone in the starlight and lit Alex's way back inside on nights when he chopped wood far past dusk, sweat and tears mixing until he had no idea where salt began and salt ended, stumbling home when he was finally as soft as raw earth, finally ready to mould himself into Michael's arms and dry his face.

Michael had told them that no matter where humans went in the universe, their tears would have the same percentage of salt as the earth's oceans. 

"You'll always be tied to this place."

He'd sounded sad, but Alex liked it. A reminder in their last months before they left of the tears this world had caused him, and how much he wanted to see the rest of the universe for himself. To be a part of the universe himself, not as a part of some machine, but as just him. Just Alex.

He finished with that cord and came around the side of the cabin, Michael's eyes tracking him through the porch posts.

Michael rolled over on his back and Alex found his legs on either side of him, looking down before he lowered himself, straddling Michael's thighs. Alex curled down, pressing his face into Michael's neck as Michael's hand dragged up and down his back. Months before, he would have been tentative to touch, every caress uncertain of its welcome. But now; their bodies were known to each other nearly as well as their minds were. Alex _needed_ these driving touches, _needed_ Michael to know he was his to hold.

"Shitty people are shitty?" Michael asked from somewhere just above Alex's crown. 

Alex nodded, muttering into his shoulder: "News at 11."

Michael huffed, chaffing his hand over Alex's sides. "Want to tell me about it?"  


Alex breathed in, the smell of Michael short and sweet in his nose, slipping around in his stomach, everywhere and no where and just _his_.

"I don't think you want to hear the jokes they were telling."  


Michael banded his arms around Alex, squeezing tight enough Alex was breathing against the pressure, body finally feeling right, feeling enclosed.  
  
"I can listen if you need to tell it, to get the poison out."

Alex shook his head: "I just want to go. Can you be done with the space ship soon, please?"

Michael's smile was as loud and sure as the rest of him. "Sure, love. One custom spaceship coming right up. Special order, Alex Guerin."

And Alex flushed, face burying itself even deeper in Michael's shoulder. _That_ had been a day he'd had to chop no wood. Him and Michael, all their friends and loved ones, all huddled together at the county court house, Max glowering the clerk into pre-emptive submission. It had been a thing of beauty and Alex hadn't been able to take off the ring for more than a few seconds at a time, which meant Michael had had to spend an hour winding leather around the axe handle, so the ring wouldn't catch and tear at the haft.

They were simple bands, soft and smooth against Alex's wandering thumb, but a dark gold, the color of the flecks in Michael's eyes, with delicately traced lines across them in Michael's language. The carvings glinted and glittered in any light they could catch, holding it and rolling it around their fingers. They were something of both of them, starfire and gunfire, flickering together, all enmeshed, all solid. They lay together, the smell of fresh-cut pine and freshly-printed blue-prints mixing around them, safe from the world in each other's arms.


End file.
